This section is intended to provide a background to the various embodiments of the technology described in this disclosure. The description in this section may include concepts that could be pursued, but are not necessarily ones that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, what is described in this section is not prior art to the description and/or claims of this disclosure and is not admitted to be prior art by the mere inclusion in this section.
In the wireless communication system, the explosive growth of wireless data traffic requires more capacity of transport links such as those specified by the existing industry standards for modular designs, e.g., Common Public Radio Interface (CPRI), Open Base Station Architecture Initiative (OBSAI), JESD204B, etc. CPRI refers to serial data links between a Remote Radio Head (RRH, also known as Radio Unit (RU)) and a Baseband Unit (BBU, also known as Digital Unit (DU) or Radio Element Controller (REC)). OBSAI mainly describes architectures and protocols for communication between base station processors, referred to as baseband modules, and RF modules. JESD204B refers to a JEDEC Standard for serial interface for data converter including, e.g., Analog-Digital Converter (ADC) or Digital-Analog Converter (DAC).
Such transport links cannot keep up with fast growing trend of wireless data traffic and becomes a bottleneck of the wireless communication system. One solution is to increase the link speed, for example, from 10G CPRI to 40G or 100G CPRI. This solution makes the cost eventually unaffordable because the growth of money is much more than the growth of link rate. Another solution is to utilize multiple links. Besides increasing the cost, this solution also makes the deployment more difficult (double fibers, Small Form Pluggables (SFPs) and accessories) and may prevent cascading connection.